Blues News: stretching the lead

Birmingham City logged two more wins in League One this past week, beating Lincoln City 1-0 and Stevenage 2-1. Both games were at home, giving the league leaders a big advantage. Another advantage was the return of Jay Stansfield to the starting lineup and the recovery of goalkeeper Ryan Allsop after a one-game absence.

Standfield didn’t score in either game, but both were dominant performances. On Saturday Lincoln City (13th) were held without a shot on goal all game while the Blues racked up a 1.90 xG. The only goal however was a penalty by Kieran Dowell. Dowell repeated that in the Tuesday game against Stevenage (12th) and Paik Seung-Ho added a second goal before Stevenage got a consolation goal deep into second-half stoppage time.

Wycombe only played one game this past week, drawing 1-1 with Peterborough (the Blues’ upcoming EFL Trophy opponent). Wrexham played twice, beating Rotherham 1-0 and losing 0-2 to Reading despite playing a man up for 15 minutes. With that loss Wrexham blew an opportunity to move into second place ahead of Wycombe and remain tied on 68 points but with a weaker goal difference (by 4 goals).

Going into this weekend’s fixtures Birmingham City is now a massive 14 points clear of Wycombe and Wrexham and have used up their game in hand against Wycombe, but retain it over Wrexham. With 11 games to play they are just 7 points short of securing at least a playoff spot. In order to blow that lead over the chasers they would have to lose at least 5 of those games; they have lost just 3 of 35 games to date. The team needs 25 points (2.27 per game) to set a new EFL points record. that’s a little less than their 2.34 per game so far. The remaining schedule really favors the league leaders: 7 of the 11 games are against teams in the bottom 8 places in the league (and the EFL Trophy final adds the 8th, in fact). None of the other 4 games are against teams higher than 10th.

City plays tomorrow at 19th-place Northampton Town (10:00am, no US TV). That’s not the big deal this weekend though: Wycombe and Wrexham face off tomorrow (10:00am, Paramount+) in what will obviously be a key game. Wycombe plays again Tuesday at Rotherham; Wrexham plays next Saturday against Stockport. That game is in the international window; the Blues game in the window against Stevenage has been postponed due to Birmingham City callups. So on top of everything else the Blues will get its games in hand back. They are back in action March 29th against bottom team Shrewsbury.